I sat on the bed, and Calla straightened to lean against the headboard as she swallowed. I knew she thought this would be the night where I presented my solution to her refusal to allow me to adopt the kids. I could force it, could put the adoption through even without her signature, but it was something I wanted her to give me willingly. She needed to acknowledge that the kids were just as much mine as they were hers.
I knew she wouldn't like what I would do to buy her a little bit of time with my insane need to have all of her marked with me. I'd mostly respected her desire to wait initially, but now that we were married?
She was out of time.
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
"No, Tesoro. It isn't," I sighed. I'd never wanted to tell her about the looming war, but Matteo and I agreed that the women should all know the dangers of it. Tiernan was fond of using women against the men who loved them, so we had to take every measure possible in defense of them. "The Bellandis don't tolerate human trafficking."
"Okay," she whispered, and I knew that the information she hadn't known would come as a relief. Calla was so oblivious to that side of my life, because I'd wanted to shelter her from the horrors of it. I couldn't let anything extinguish her light. Especially not me.
"A loan shark has taken over a trafficking operation and is intending to operate within the city limits. Because Matteo doesn't allow it in his city, we're moving toward outright war between our two operations." She froze, her deep blue eyes going wide as she glanced away from me.
"Are the kids and I in danger?" she whispered, and it killed me to have to answer her honestly. To confirm the fear I saw blooming on her face. “Are you in danger?” Calla would always do whatever it took to protect her kids, and I could already see the gears turning. With Jason gnawing at the edges, it was beyond the least ideal time for us to be having this conversation.
But the conversation I'd had with Murphy earlier had only made one thing clear. The man fixated on me, probably saw it as a personal affront that he couldn't entice me away from Matteo. It put Calla and the kids more at the center of his focus than I wanted them to be. "You could be," I told her. "The kids have their security during the day, and you have Dante. As long as you stick with him and don't spend great amounts of time out and about, you'll be fine."
She jumped up from the bed, going to the wind
ow where she stared into the side yard. "Send us away," she said, spinning to face me. "It's the best solution. We can just leave the city for a while, and we'll come back when everything settles down."
I stood, prowling toward her as I tried to control my agitation. Everything with Calla was an excuse to flee, to shut down the connection that ran so strong between us. She was too afraid of losing me, of giving herself to me fully and then being alone again.
I understood it better than anyone. But I wouldn't tolerate it.
"I won't let anyone touch you or the kids, Sunshine," I murmured, wrapping my hand around the back of her neck as I kissed her forehead.
"And what about you? I won’t stay here and watch you die," she argued, her voice catching as the traumatized fear she had of being alone came to the surface.
"Do you think this will be quick? A couple weeks on vacation and you come home and the war is won? Turf wars last years, they're drawn out and they are a slow process. I will not send my wife and children away for years where I cannot see them and hold them," I said, holding her tight when she tried to jerk out of my grip.
"Even if it's what's best for us?"
"Calla," I warned, fury pulsing through me at her insistence that she would be better off without me. There was no place in the world that was safer than with me. "I will always protect you, and there is not a single place you can go that will be safer than with me. If it comes to it, Matteo has invited all of us to stay at the Estate. But we're not at that point yet," I told her.
"It doesn't seem smart to put all of us under one roof. Wouldn't that just put a bigger target on the Estate?" she asked.
"It would," I responded. "But it would also enable us to center our defense. Nobody gets onto the Estate without Matteo's permission, Sunshine."
She quieted, and I finally let her go so she could look back out the window again. "I won't be locked in this house again, Ryker. For whatever reason. If that's how you plan to protect us, then you should just let us go. We can leave, and we'll go somewhere that no one will ever think to look."
"You're my wife," I growled. "Those vows are until death. You're naïve if you think Matteo doesn't have allies in cities all across this country, and enemies. Wherever you went, you would do it with the Bellandi name, but without Bellandi protection. They'd kill you before you even found a place to live." It hurt me to admit the truth to my Sunshine, to show her how trapped she truly was.
I didn't need a cage to trap her with me. My lifestyle did that all on its own. She nodded, turning and going back to the bed silently.
I let her curl up on her side, climbing in behind her and pressing myself against her back.
If I hadn't already wanted to slaughter Murphy slowly, the distance he put between my woman and I would have been the final straw. She made no move to sink into my touch like she normally did, too consumed by her own fear of losing someone she loved to even begin to understand her feelings for what they were.
He was a dead man, and I knew we would all fight to be the one to kill him. Hopefully, I got to play with him first. To show him exactly what it was like to be abused and maybe let someone rape him.
Tormented.
If I had my way, I'd keep him in my freezer for weeks to give him a slight taste of just what life was like for the women he sold.
And only once he truly understood would I let someone else put a bullet in his brain.
Especially when I felt the way Calla trembled with her silent tears of fear.